


Invierno

by Annie Christ (SmokedSalmon)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 04:41:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmokedSalmon/pseuds/Annie%20Christ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Axel and Roxas are both heading toward the trenches of adulthood when they meet in a NYC queer youth shelter with shared identities, positive signs and angry determination to be in love and find a comfortable place in their city. Five short drabbles document their shared Christmases together before the two young men find a way to make it work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invierno

**Author's Note:**

> This was a part of the Tumblr KHXMAS Secret Santa I participated in. Omgroxas on Tumblr was my wonderful partner, and I decided they deserved every bit of this oneshot.

I.

Their first Christmas together was spent in a shelter nestled in the urban backwoods of the Bronx. Snow swept Axel from the front stoop of a world-rotted church and relocated him into a sea of green wallpaper, grainy wood flooring and rows upon rows of cots that creaked and begged with each toss and turn. When he stepped through the front door a sense of familiarity sat on the back of his tongue because there he was _again_. Posters that promised him knowing his HIV status was sexy were taped every ten footsteps down the main hallway, and kids strode through doorways and on into designated dayrooms meant for group therapy, studying and laziness. The bustle of letter-labeled teenagers kicked to the curb was something he’d known since he was fifteen years old. Now nineteen was staring him in the face like the reaper reminding him there were only so many times he could come back before they pushed him headfirst into the trenches of adulthood he’d so easily avoided.

Axel was the letter G with a sharp positive sign to accent where he belonged in the queer acronym. Identifying as Latino and gay with a mess of HIV positive was insult added to injury thrice over. _Of course_ he was a gay pretty boy and _of course_ he was one body fluctuation away from a drifting T-cell count that would plummet him into full-blown AIDS. He’d seen the costs for medication and it wasn’t like the state tried to take responsibility for him so that he could qualify for a pharmaceutical company’s pity. Axel had started the procedure in the very shelter  he currently stood in multiple times, but right as the paperwork hit someone’s desk he found himself fleeing through the front door and refusing to look back for months at a time. Why? As if he could explain his own fear. Taking a chemical cocktail made to prevent being eaten alive was too real for him, and he was young.

Young yet simultaneously old, actually. He’d lived hundreds of lives just in the past year, but a small cot hidden in the depths of Twilight Place for LGBT Youth was where he repeatedly returned. Like always, they found him a bed when it should’ve been impossible. He heard the same things every time; _too charming for your own good, too goddamn pretty, too intelligent_. This was followed by a slew of questions about whether or not he should finish high school, what he wanted out of life and all these ideas he’d never had the luxury to access. It wasn’t that he wanted nothing out of life, but he’d been preconditioned to find the nearest government check and cross his fingers for fate to work in his favor. Something _might_ happen to him if he waited. Like a minimum wage job and apartment. But that was only a withering maybe.

It was Christmas Eve when he returned for what would be the final time, and when he collapsed his pitiful weight onto the cot he stared at the back of the head of a boy who was lying on the cot beside his. The kid’s hands were pushed beneath a plastic pillow. All Axel could think about was how the boy was _blond_. In the grand scheme of things, he didn’t have room to talk about hair. He was currently sporting dirty brunette roots beneath a clump of fried poinsettia locks. Really, there just weren’t that many white boys in the shelter he stayed in. It left twenty different questions going through his head, and without thinking, he vomited up the first question that came to mind. It was unapologetic, bland and Axel didn’t even think he was awake.

“Why’re you even here?”

A long pause followed before the kid turned over onto his side, sat up and proceeded to throw himself onto Axel and let his fist make nice with Axel’s face. While having his ass promptly removed and handed to him Axel had two things coursing through his stream of thought. One being that the kid was pretty alright looking accompanied by the fact his nose was bleeding all over the kid’s knuckles and that he was HIV positive. That second thought was the reason he summoned his starved strength and kicked his assailant toward the wall.

“I’m HIV positive, you stupid fuck!”

The kid’s shoulders were rising and falling with his angry intakes of breath. “So am I! Our dick sucking virus isn’t going to save your ass today!”

When he strode back toward him the kids who were watching from their beds were jeering and encouraging the confrontation. There was the occasional ‘take your shirts off’ and ‘make out,’ but Axel ignored his acquaintance’s hormones long enough to sit up and slam the angry ball of blond back against the wall. Before more blood contaminated the area Axel shoved himself up against the kid and pushed his sweatshirt protected arm against the other’s mouth so that he wouldn’t be able to scream over his words.

“Just shut up and listen, you fucking idiot. HIV comes in different strains. If your subtype mixed with mine who knows what would happen. You’d probably fucking jump start something.” Axel yanked back his arm long enough to slap the blond like a parent scolding a child. “Research your own fucking disease, blanco.”

Maybe the backhand knocked sense into him, Axel didn’t know, but the blond’s skyline eyes heavily blinked and he seemed relatively collected as the counselor who’d seen his paperwork maybe five times jogged toward them. Others took ahold of Roxas, but the first on the scene, Ansem, touched Axel’s bloody face without fear and motioned for him to get new clothes. The blond who’d done the wailing was placed into isolation for the night, but as Ansem led Axel toward a storage room, he explained.

“Roxas is having a hard time. I wouldn’t take it personally.”

“You mean the blanco back there? We’re all having a hard time.” Axel yanked off his shirt to reveal ribs. “He doesn’t get my fucking pity.”

The next morning Axel took in the Christmas spirit by smoking his last squirreled away pack of menthols on an abandoned stoop two doors down. His cheek was pressed against brick that’d seen more cockroaches make love than he cared to think about and snow mercilessly blew against the unprotected side of his head. Everytime he exhaled smoke he sighed and closed his eyes. After doing this numerous times the last thing he expected was to reopen them and see someone standing in front of him, let alone the kid who’d bloodied his nose the night before.

“Can I buy one of those off of you?”

“Just bum one.”

Axel didn’t understand why he was being so giving, but it was Christmas and Ansem’s words were haunting him. Roxas plopped down with a tired exhale, and due to the wind, they found themselves leaned close so that Axel could cup the flame as Roxas lit up. For a moment there was a flicker of eye contact and then Roxas smiled.

“I’m Roxas.”

“I heard.” Axel pulled back and pocketed his lighter while slyly side eyeing the blond. “You know that punch kind of hurt my face.”

Roxas quirked an eyebrow and grinned, pleased with himself. “I’m not sorry.”

“Well, _thanks_.”

 

II.

The second Christmas took place in a sparsely furnished studio apartment Axel and Roxas spent an entire year working odd jobs, pushing and slaving in vermin infested kitchens for. While their mutual friends were three streets down getting lit and faded, Axel spent what meager disposable income he had on a box of cheap condoms, store brand hot chocolate mix and sheets for their stained mattress. When he dropped the bag onto their fold-in kitchen table Roxas was stirring his condensed soup with a determined expression.

“You never struck me as a romantic.” Roxas snorted as he glanced at the hot chocolate.  He picked up the canister and turned it in his hand while spooning soup into his mouth..“But I think I can appreciate it.”

Axel smoothed his fingers along his collarbones that weren’t quite as visible as they’d been before. “You _think_ you can? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Roxas set the cocoa down, and as if discussing the weather, which was terrible, continued.“Put the sheets on the bed and I’ll show you.”

Trees and lights to festoon were excessive and expensive, but they didn’t need decorations to make the moment theirs. When Axel tugged Roxas close to his chest the lady next door screamed at her cats, but Axel kept his wry smile before crushing their lips together. The weight on his shoulders simultaneously lifted and ground his bones to dust as he struggled to sink onto the mattress once it was no longer baring its potential diseases. Not that it mattered. Roxas always reminded him they were diseased, but there was morbid affection hidden in the thought process. They were equally flawed and lesser in the sense that only so many people could understand the thoughts that sank its teeth into their tattered hearts every single day. And it _was_ every day. There was no sugar coating the idea of never knowing when it would strike. It was what kept the both of them awake at night when the other had a cold that lasted longer than two days. It was what made thinking about the future like the rest of the world’s inspired youth seemingly impossible.

Maybe they were too young to be in love with one another, but when Axel fucked Roxas he mimicked everything he knew about love. He thought about how pores were a part of his intricate skin layers, and each kiss between Roxas’ rapidly rising and falling pectorals were hiding a whispered word of affection too thick and embarrassing to slide off his tongue. Something imbedded in the very central core of his bone marrow pleaded for Roxas to stay. Finding the balance to those thoughts left him standoffish until one of them was on his back and then the begging, nail biting and fervent groaning recited endless pages of yellowed poetry.

_I’d miss you..._

He gagged on Roxas’ cock and even as saliva dribbled down his chin he was caught up in the whirlwind of the fifty different lives he believed he and Roxas deserved. He thought about a life where both their parents hadn’t cast them out onto the streets for a compulsion they couldn’t control. He thought about a life where he was motivated to get a decent job because he believed he was worth something more than poverty’s cycle. He thought about a life where said job could earn him healthcare he’d share with the person he loved. Of course, he thought about simpler things; the taste of Roxas’ winter tanned skin, how the bed creaked in time with their rhythmic movements and then the reality that he was comfortable for the first time in his short life.

Roxas always prayed to God before filling a condom, but Axel pushed the boy’s thighs back and could only worship the person who’d inspired their decision to begin living. When Axel had sat with Roxas in the shelter’s kitchen the Christmas before he’d been the one to suggest the possibility of saving up for a new life. Axel told him it couldn’t be done alone, Roxas agreed, and two weeks later Axel was caught bent over in a shower with Roxas tugging at his hair and asking him how much he loved his cock up his ass. Ansem caught them while Axel was in mid-monologue and it took the redhead approximately two months before he could look the man in the eye without contemplating swan diving in front of a train.

When they finished they drank their hot cocoa made with water and turned up the furnace to avoid putting on clothes. Axel made a point to keep their skin in constant contact, but Roxas didn’t mind. He mindlessly brushed his fingertips along Axel’s leg hair and watched snow drift through a street light’s soft glow.

“I could stay like this forever,” Roxas admitted with a tired smile.

Axel’s thumb dragged along the chip in his mug and he shrugged. “I’m not planning on changing anything. It could be like this for as long as you want it.”

He shoved Axel’s leg and laughed, but it was a knee jerk reaction to hope. “What’s with you tonight?”

 

III.

Their third Christmas took place in the same apartment, but this time they had a tree and Christmas lights for what little room they possessed. Both Axel and Roxas had finally wrangled in their GEDs after making a drunken pact to get some kind of college degree from somewhere. It was what they considered to be a pipe dream, but there were brochures to colleges cast aside on the coffee table, Axel had moved from dishwasher to the line, which meant a raise and simultaneously longer hours, and Axel and Roxas had both learned how to wrap presents by watching their mutual friend Xion from across the hall. Axel said it was progress. Roxas didn’t say anything.

The redhead worked Christmas morning, and he left Roxas with half a pot of coffee and a cheap Christmas card containing a savings account statement he’d spent two years grooming and starving for. One year in the roach infested apartment that forced them to keep anything resembling food in tupperware containers dissolved at their feet when Roxas opened what he expected to be the typical overly affectionate note with seasonal flare. At first, he stared at the slip of thin paper perplexed, but all at once it sank in what that amount of money meant. Roxas sat up, looked around their surprisingly festive apartment and threw back stale blankets.

Running for the subway on poorly salted sidewalks and stairs made for several near death experiences, but Roxas didn’t stop even though the icy wind burned his ears and bodies didn’t move aside fast enough for him. The succession of stops left Roxas antsy, tapping his foot against the damp rubber flooring and counting each time the sliding doors allowed flocks of anxious people to exit and enter. At one point, he tilted his head back against the window with his hands clasped and smiled, fleetingly laughed, but he sobered himself up enough. Not that it mattered. He was sure holiday travelers had seen much worse because--well, it was New York City.

The stop that led to Axel’s  restaurant took an hour to reach, but when the train doors opened he rushed into the crowd, jogged up slick stairs and appeared on the sidewalk with a vibrating pulse. Through humans and traffic he dodged and ran because there was something behind his ribcage fluttering, twisting and on the verge of combusting like a bundle of dynamite. The entire way there he smiled, and though he loved his neighborhood and despised the stigma it carried, Roxas was still overjoyed to know there was room for growth. He had somewhere else to go with someone more than willing to run away with him.

He arrived at the back door breathless with lungs burning and his cowlick flipped higher than usual. Though he knew it could get them in trouble, Roxas tugged open the heavy metal door and strode through the mop room and on into a bustling kitchen where people were discussing that night’s menu. When he spotted Axel the man was in the middle of preparing eggplant with the kind of knife precision he’d only witnessed fleetingly in their apartment. It wasn’t like they could afford much that wasn’t a product of their urban desert, but sometimes Axel shopped outside of their neighborhood before heading home, and that’s when Axel’s knife work came into play.

The bulbous purple vegetables were settled on sanitized cooking sheets and Roxas stayed back to watch until Axel finished up. He took care to stay out of people’s way, but someone recognized him. Roxas was pretty sure this someone’s name was Demyx, but the older man with his blond undercut shot him a knowing stare and waited for the proper downtime to motion for Axel to follow him out into the empty dining room as if there was something urgent to discuss. That cue prompted Roxas to stride through the kitchen with eyes lit by all the possibilities in the world. That redheaded boy he’d punched three years beforehand was suddenly his keeper of hope, and the longer he thought on it the wetter his eyes became, but he couldn’t cry. That wasn’t allowed. No one cried where they came from. If he cried, then he was weak and that weakness wouldn’t build their life any taller.

“How did you save up 6,000 fucking dollars?” Roxas’ words sputtered through a sob.

When Roxas uttered those pained words Axel’s back was facing him as Demyx stepped away. Axel turned head first over shoulder toward the blond who’d made a beeline toward him. The redhead thought he’d done something irreparable until Roxas threw his arms around his neck and tugged him down into the kind of kiss that knocked their teeth together with a sharp clack. Axel’s laughter filtered through Roxas’ determined lip work and he reached up to wipe up tears Roxas would never let him mention again. He understood, though. They would never have to look at the streets that’d owned their lives again. Not until they were ready. Not if he had anything to do with it.

 

IV.

Their fourth Christmas together happened during the first winter break of Roxas’ college career. Axel’s minimum wage had doubled since they’d moved into their slightly more spacious single bedroom apartment overlooking Brooklyn. The entrance ways were arched, which meant there were no real doors aside from the front door, but it didn’t matter to either one of them because no one else entered the haven that was their home. It was the first year Axel was allowed off early for any holiday, and after ten hours of endless preparatory work, he’d stomped through wet snow to prepare what he considered a real dinner for the both of them.

The chef who owned his life had gifted him with his own knife set upon letting him onto the line and the gift that followed was a set of pots and pans worth more than their monthly rent. Axel told Roxas everyone else had received something similar as he shook snow off his boots, but it wasn’t true no matter how Axel turned it. He was too afraid to suggest that there was a chance he was going places, that _they_ were going places. The single bedroom apartment with a gas stove was miraculous enough. After months of virtually starving, digging what they could find to eat out of restaurant trash cans and wiping up hot tears of defeat they couldn’t think to ask for more.

“Nice bruise,” Axel stepped up behind Roxas and pushed his fingers through the multiple twists and turns of hair that made up the back of his head. Roxas’ knife work was adorably bad, but Axel didn’t say anything about the way he held the blade or how he pushed the knife. Instead he kept smiling and prayed Roxas wouldn’t chop off the ends of his fingertips and turn their Christmas into a trip to the ER. “Where’d it come from?”

Roxas stopped to think as he looked at the bruise. “I actually have no idea.”

Axel smoothed his fingertips along the three inch in diameter spot and something sank into the pit of his gut like an anchor. He wasn’t sure why the bruise bothered him so much at first, but when Roxas asked Axel to hand him another onion, his ribs clasped around his heart like a Venus flytrap. He pushed his cheek against Roxas’ temple and stared at the bruise with his lips twisted to the side.

“Clinging much?”

“I want you to go to the doctor tomorrow.”

Roxas stopped what he was doing and his eyes narrowed. “I can’t afford a doctor.”

“I’ll pay for the first visit. From there you should be able to get some kind of grant. You’re still considered low income, kid. We pussyfoot around something that’s not a fucking joke.”

“Then you have to do it, too.”

“I can only afford one of us right now, but when you’re set up I’ll go in and see about it.”

Roxas stood there with a disenchanted expression. “I don’t wanna talk about this right now.”

“Right, but it’s not going away. You’re going to a doctor.”

A silence held between them and Roxas dropped the knife onto the counter and turned around to look at Axel with his jaw locked tight. He was suppressing everything in order to come across as hardened, but Axel knew better. It’d been four years and through all the fights Roxas used to pick with people twice his size and triple his strength Axel had learned how to both avoid the situations and read Roxas well enough to talk him out of being progressively stupid. By this point, if he couldn’t dissuade Roxas by knowing him, then there wouldn’t have been much point for them to be together. Roxas was Axel’s equivalent to the Book of Prayer. He could recite the basics that kept his faith apparent, but he was also capable of looking into Roxas and deciphering what wasn’t quite as clear.

“So what happens if one of us dies?”

The question was a shot through Axel’s chest. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about this.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

Another pause, but it wasn’t half as long because Axel was always ready to run his mouth. “I mean, if something happened to you, I’d be there for you.”

“I’ve looked into it.” Roxas was always infuriatingly blunt. “You couldn’t be. If I got sick and I was put into some nasty fucking hospital because dying in a hospital is cheaper than paying for the medication to keep me alive, then you wouldn’t be able to come see me. You wouldn’t be able to hold any kind of dominion over my life when the virus started eating my brain. Who else would know what I wanted if I got sick? Who else would know what you wanted if you got sick? You wouldn’t be there for me, and I wouldn’t be there for you because we’re a couple of fucking faggots and no one cares about what happens to our hearts. No one fucking cares about us. My own mom didn’t care about me and we both know what your dad did.”

Axel grasped onto Roxas’ shoulder and incredulously stared at him. “Did you forget where we met?”

He shrugged away from Axel. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“Then go to a doctor. We’re in a place where we’re still lucky enough to get help. It’s time to be adults about it and go see someone when we should’ve in the shelter.”

Roxas swallowed spit and inhaled hard as if huffing from frustration, but it was clear he was concealing the urge to cry. “What if it’s bad?”

He bumped his hip against Roxas’ to push him from the counter so that he could finish Roxas’ chopping job. “Then we’ll deal with it. You’ll be okay.”

They didn’t talk about it again, but the air between them was heavy. Axel knew there was bitterness on Roxas’ tongue. It was why he took his time with the angry boy that night and everything from his voice to his general movements were gentler. Their actions carried like dandelion seeds on a breeze, and when Axel grabbed Roxas’ biceps from behind in that night’s semi-darkness, he attempted to will his patience into the limbs of the person he loved above all else. When Axel had told Roxas he’d be there with him if Nature gave him a death sentence it was the closest thing to ‘I love you’ he’d ever managed, but there it was as plain as day. Roxas hadn’t denied it, but he had tried to tell him it was impossible.

“I’ll work longer and make more money,” Axel offered with his cheek pressed against Roxas’. “I’ll make it right for us, but I can’t do it without you. I can’t make another move to a place that’ll put you on my health insurance without all of your support.”

“On your health insurance?” Roxas sputtered through a laugh. “What’re you going to do? Adopt me? We’re a little past that age, you know…”

“Nah,” he whispered. “Not like that. Same sex marriage is legal in New Hampshire, though.”

Roxas stopped in hesitation, but then kept trying to laugh at him. “What the hell is in New Hampshire for either of us?”

“Would you, though?”

“Would I what?”

Axel pulled Roxas’ back closer to his chest and tried to make light of the question. “Would you marry me?”

The redhead’s pulse gave a trill like a nervous bird as Roxas chewed on the question. He finally relented, but it wasn’t forced or out of obligation. Roxas softened his expression. “Yeah.”

 

V.

Their fifth Christmas together took place on the roof of Axel’s restaurant even though he’d managed to get out relatively early. It was the first dry Christmas Roxas could recall, but he didn’t mind. His head tilted back and he smiled when Axel lit up a cigarette and the smoke wisped along the interior of his nose. For a moment he breathed deep. His chest expanded with a healthy bloat and he decided he was happy. Roxas had taken a job at his college on top of his part-time job at the convenience store Axel religiously bought their cigarettes from, but during his break he’d decided to start volunteering at Twilight Place. It was where his entire world had been readjusted by a single punch to someone’s face.

That someone was aimlessly meandering behind him, taking in the night air. Axel occasionally bounced on the heels of his leather boots, readjust his puffy jacket and hummed a line from a song he’d heard earlier that day. He kept quietly dragging off a yellowing filter and nervously shifting about. It wasn’t until Roxas said nothing for more than five minutes did Axel finally feel the need to break the silence.

“I have this idea.”

Roxas blinked at the starry sky. “You have an idea?”

“Yeah--a good idea.”

“A good idea?”

He heard Axel’s footsteps, but he didn’t turn around. For six months Roxas had been on antiretrovirals due to Axel’s incessant determination to get him through some kind of program to help pay for his medication. The past six months had been brimming with Roxas’ profuse vomiting and chronic weakness. The medication cocktail they put him on was supposed to even out as time went on, but the adjustments could take up to a year before they settled. Neither of them had been dithered by the side effects, but there were days when Roxas had sobbed over his textbooks because it _was_ hard. Nothing had ever been simple for them, and this was a part of it all.

He’d never complained. Anytime Roxas threw up he reminded Axel he could be on the streets withering away with only a pile of dog shit to keep him company. Things could be worse. Things had been worse, but they’d make it out alive, and he was okay. Axel never figured out where the turn around derived from, but he saw how the forced positivity shriveled Roxas day after day.

That Christmas was a good day for him, though. There was no holding Roxas on his lap and promising him that this was the way they could be together for years to come. It wasn’t heavy with the snows of their lives, and the air between them was steady with peace. A mutual understanding--something they possessed for nearly every aspect of their lives--carried through their out of sync breathing. It was a give and take of oxygen, almost. Into Axel’s lungs and then out of Roxas’ lungs.

“I love you.” Axel said simply, turning Roxas toward him. He tugged him close and pressed their foreheads against one another’s as Axel shifted his weight from foot to foot.. “You have to know, after five years, that I love you.”

Axel didn’t give Roxas time to say anything as he slipped a silver band onto Roxas’ left ring finger with a seamless push. It was accompanied by the kind of kiss that held, unmoving. Neither of them pursued it with ambitious lip and tongue work that would’ve hitched someone’s breathing and escalated into a game of Whoever Pulls Out A Condom First Puts It In. Instead the fleeting kiss told the story of their five years together.

Five years of careful experimentation through the bottom of life’s offering plate and on toward the decorative idols cast about the cathedral. Five years of growing up and swimming through one another’s familiar blood streams where a virus bit chunks of their positivity off to float belly up. Five years without a single utterance of the word ‘love’ all while mutually screaming it in one another’s ears until their throats ripped to silence.

“And tomorrow I’m going to marry you.” Axel didn’t know why, but he was blinking through emotions he’d never let fully surface, but they were there, boiling. “Because you deserve to have someone with you no matter what the hell happens to you, and I’m going to be there. I’ll be there if you leave me, and you’ll be there if I leave you.”

Same sex marriage had been legalized in New York earlier that summer, but when Roxas had managed to get his medication Axel had flaked out of the original plan. At the time, they seemed okay. Marriage wouldn’t benefit them if Roxas’ T-cell count was in a safe range, but like every Christmas, Axel recalled where it’d all started and how HIV wasn’t the only thing that could take them away from one another. They’d spent their lives learning how to acknowledge it and not deal with it, but now that they were dealing Axel believed their lives needed to move past the underlying fear that’d kept them a Bible’s width apart.

Roxas’ bottom lip trembled and in turn it made Axel’s quiver. All Roxas could do was repeat Axel’s words. “And tomorrow I’m going to marry you.”

 


End file.
